Second: one good thing about working in an island resort is that the water is only a couple of meters away 🙂 Beat the summer heat this afternoon by diving our house reef. I used having to download my water temperature sensor data as an excuse. Heehee. That and I volunteered to take photos of one of our guests doing his Bubblemaker course 🙂 Aside from taking pictures of a 9-year-old during his first scuba experience, I also got to take some pretty good pictures of our resident bigeye scad (Selar crumenopthalmus). Swimming through a school of fish who totally ignored my presence was a surreal experience. I tried moving away so that I could take better wide-angle photos but nothing doing. The water was just too shallow and the school was just too big!

Fish in the light

Window through the darkness

Just might become one of my all-time favorite photos.

I said on Facebook that I wish I had extra-clear water for that perfect shot. Jayvee said that the water was already pretty clear. It was pretty clear but you could still see some backscatter. He said I should get strobes. I said he should give me the money for them 😛

I got to take the G12 for its second dive yesterday when the Community Ecology (Comeco) Lab crew came over to Miniloc to check the house reef. Yay friends visiting my workplace! Still had difficulty manipulating the camera to get the look I wanted (so many buttons!) but it was a bit easier this time around. Hopefully it’ll become second nature by the time the 5th dive comes around? Haha!

This surgeonfish is feeding on the turfing algae on the rock. Tentative identification is lined bristletooth (Ctenochaetus striatus)Renmar dubbed this "The Big Ball of Awesome". This is what the school of bigeye scad (Selar crumenophthalmus) looks like from below.A schooling bannerfish (Heniochus acuminatus) with no school 🙁

Mavic and I got to stay out in El Nido town last night with some friends from UP MSI. YAHOOO!!! Thank you to Ate Mags, Fleur, Kuya Mel, and Renmar for letting us crash with them last night (hey, I did help somewhat in making the cages :D). It was a great night filled with food, friends, and alcohol. I crashed earlier than everybody else because I had to wake up at 5:15am to catch the 6am boat back to Miniloc. It was exhausting but so worth it.

Dinner at Aplaya Bar and Restaurant. Ordered grilled squid. The food was yummy (of course! The restaurant is owned by former MIR F&B Supervisor Bong Meridor) but took FOREVER to arrive. We ended up eating Ken's "birthday cake" while waiting because we were so freaking hungry.Moved over to Sea Slugs for drinks. Their chilled margaritas are kickass. That there is our second pitcher and I drank 1.5-2 glasses of the stuff. Whoo! Reg's student (who happens to be the daughter of Sea Slugs' owner) was celebrating her birthday that night and sent spaghetti, pancit, and pizza over to our table. Wow! I felt unworthy since I didn't know the birthday girl but I will never turn down a Sea Slugs pizza.

Aside from being Aids’ birthday and Valentine’s Day, February 14 also marked the day our department got our brand-spanking-new Ikelite underwater housing for our Canon G12. YAHOOOOO!!! Unfortunately, Kring was too afraid of wrecking it (and the camera) to actually test it out. Fortunately, I have no such fear 😛

I tested the camera and housing this morning on a dive on the Miniloc house reef and it was glorious. As with all new gadgets, it took some getting used to. For one thing, the camera itself was unfamiliar. Haha. The G12’s been with Kring since it arrived last year so today was the first time I’d actually used it for an extended period of time. Case in point: I plugged in the strobe plug in the camera’s hotshoe. The thing is, I didn’t have a strobe. HAHA. End result: I disabled the on-camera flash and left myself with no other light source *facepalm* Second, the housing is humongous compared to the Canon S95 ultracompact housing that I’m used to. You need both hands to operate it – not easy when you’re trying to line up your shot and the current has other things in mind. Ah well. Every dive is a learning experience 🙂

I did manage to take some decent photos:

Red lionfish (Pterois volitans). General rule of the ocean: if it's colorful and moves slowly, it's dangerous.Giant trevally (Caranx ignobilis). This guy can reach up to 1.7 meters long!Bigeye scad (Selar crumenophthalmus). They're not particularly colorful but they're pretty impressive when you see them in schools.

Yep, that is a freaking WHALE SHARK (Rhincodon typus) in front of Miniloc Island Resort. You can hear our excited squeals in the video 😛 Now, people have been spotting these whale sharks all around the bay starting December 2011 but those sightings tapered off in late January and this is my first time to see one. And I got to swim with it! How? I jumped into the water, not caring that I was in my full work uniform. No mask, no snorkel, no fins. Melo (one of our dive masters) was kind enough to lend me his mask so I could see. I swam with it for a good 10 minutes, treading water and realizing that I am severely out of shape. Sigh. It also wasn’t until later when I remembered that our uniform shorts turn transparent when wet >_< Raymond was kind enough not to say anything and just handed me a towel to wear around my waist until I got cleaned up.

The second part of what made this day awesome: my entry making it to the top 5 of the Philippine Travel Operators Association (PhilTOA) poster-making contest. YAY!!!! My entry:

Our company actually got 2 out of the 5 slots – our other entry featured my friend and coworker Rima’s turtle photo and my caption. Not bad for two Bio majors with no formal art-related training 😛 DOT Secretary Jimenez will be choosing the Top 3. I hope we win (and the prizes are awesome)! 😀